Florian Breit — Home


A picture of myself

Oh, hello there :)

I'm a (mainly) theoretical linguist who sometimes worries a little too much about melodic representation. I'm currently a Research Officer in Linguistics at Bangor University's Language Attitudes Research Team (L'ART). I'm also affiliated with UCL as an Honorary Research Fellow, where I previously worked as a Lecturer (Teaching). My current work is mainly concerned with language attitudes, particularly within-group attitudes toward (often contested) regional and/or minority languages. My PhD was on a (diacritic-free) floating element account of Welsh mutation. I also work on Element Theory (especially laryngeal contrast in nasals, formalism, and the phonetic interface) and on various aspects of Welsh linguistics (quantity, auxiliary deletion, epenthesis). I also teach on a variety of linguistics courses (see my CV and my LING101 YouTube channel).

When I'm not doing linguistics I enjoy writing software, advocating green politics, cycling, theology, exploring the great outdoors, reading Thoreau, carving spoons, cooking, climbing, and martial arts. One of my long-standing dreams is to spend a year or two in a little hut by the beach, preferably in Catalonia or South America, wearing a panama hat with a hole, drinking too much cheap rose and writing bad poetry.

Recent(ish) news...

  • Nov '24: Lissander Brasca, Ianto Gruffydd, Marco Tamburelli and mine paper "A matter of strength: Language policy, attitudes and linguistic dominance in three bilingual communities" is out now with the Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development.
  • Sep '24: Marco Tamburelli, Ianto Gruffydd, Lissander Brasca, Meilyr Jones and I presented work looking at the interaction of policy, attitudes and vitality in the context of three community's language attitudes at the International Congress of Linguists in Poznań.
  • Sep '24: I gave a talk on my and colleagues' work on within-group language attitudes at the UCL Linguistics Seminar.
  • Jul '24: Ianto Gruffydd, Marco Tamburelli and I presented work comparing explicit and implicit attitudes with respect to early age exposure in Welsh young adult's language attitudes at the Cambridge Endangered Languages and Cultures Conference.
  • Jun '24: Marco Tamburelli, Hamid Bagheri, Ianto Gruffydd, Lissander Brasca and I presented word comparing the IAT and other methods for measuring language attitudes across two bilingual communities at ICLASP18 in Tallinn.
  • Feb '24: Lissander Brasca, Marco Tamburelli, Ianto Gruffydd and I presented work on socio-political recognition and language attitudes in minority language settings at the VALS-ALS annual meeting on Asymmetries and Inequalities in Language in Bern.
  • Nov '23: I presented recent work in progress on modelling the lexical impact of mutation on neutralisation and contrastivity at the Western Conference on Linguistics.
  • Oct '23: Marco Tamburelli, Ianto Gruffydd, Lissander Brasca and I gave two talks about methodological aspects of our research on attitudes across several bilingual communities at Linguistics Beyond and Within in Poznan and Documenting Languages, Documenting Cultures in Naples.
  • Aug '23: Elements, Government, and Licensing: Developments in phonology (edited by myself, Yuko Yoshida and Connor Youngberg) is now available open access from UCL Press.
  • Aug '23: Ianto Gruffydd and I have given a public outreach talk on our work on minority language attitudes (esp. Welsh) as part of Bangor University's presence at the 2023 National Eisteddfod.
  • Jul/Aug '23: I have taught two courses (one on the Phonology-Morphosyntax Interface, one on Melodic Representation) and a Praat workshop at the EGG Summer School 2023 in Novi Sad.
  • Jun '23: Ianto Gruffydd and I have presented the first results from our comparative research on minority language attitudes at this year's Welsh Linguistics Seminar in Bangor.
  • Jun '23: Primitives of Phonological Structure (edited by myself, Bert Botma, Marijn van 't Veer and Marc van Oostendorp) is out now with OUP.
  • Jun '23: Jacob Rando and I have presented new results on quantity in North Welsh at APAP 2023 in Lublin and at the Welsh Linguistics Seminar in Bangor.
  • May '23: Marco Tamburelli, Ianto Gryffydd, Lissander Brasca and I have presented/demoed the first public release of the L'ART Research Assistant at Bangor University.
  • Feb '23: I've left my teaching post at UCL, but remain affiliated with the department as an Honorary Research Fellow.
  • Jan '22: I took a new research position at Bangor University's Language Attitudes Research Team, where I will be researching attitudes towards the Moselle-Franconian varieties spoken in East Belgium.
  • May '21: Yuni Kim, myself, Bert Botma, Faith Chiu, Natalia Hernández, Nancy Kula, and Kuniya Nasukawa gave a talk on Nasal Shielding and non-phonological voicing in Amuzgo de San Pedro Amuzgos at the 28th Manchester Phonology Meeting.
  • Feb '21: I've been awarded Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy.
  • Jan '21: James Cottam and I gave a talk on how synchronic and diachronic evidence conspire toward trigger-centricity in Welsh mutation at the Bilbao Morphophonology Circle, University of Deusto.
  • Oct '20: I'm now a Lecturer (Teaching) at UCL.
  • Jun '20: I've been nominated for two Student Choice Awards, in the categories Inspiring Teaching Delivery and Exceptional Feedback.
  • Jan '20: I gave a talk on Nasal Relativism at the workshop on Nasality and laryngeal representations in phonology at the University of Essex
  • Sep '19: Started a new job as a Teaching Fellow in Phonetics and Phonology at UCL.
  • Jul '19: Passed my PhD on Welsh Mutation & Strict Modularity without corrections (post-viva picture).
  • May '19: Presented talks on modularity and the phonology of Welsh Mutation at Atelier de phonologie in Paris and Séminare P3 in Nantes.